Knocking in an internal combustion engine easily occurs at the time of a high load and low speed operation. Therefore, for example, knocking easily occurs when an accelerator pedal is depressed to climb a sloping road, that is, when the engine load shifts from a low load to a high load in the state of a low engine speed. In this case, if cooling intake air which is fed to the engine, the occurrence of knocking can be suppressed. Therefore, an internal combustion engine is known in the art which is provided with a cooling device for cooling the intake air fed to the engine and is designed so that when for example the engine load starts to increase, the cooling action of the intake air fed to the engine is strengthened.
However, even if strengthening the cooling action of the intake air fed to the engine, time is required until the cooling action of the intake air is actually strengthened. Therefore, even if strengthening the cooling action of the intake air fed to the engine when the engine load starts to increase, it is difficult to suppress the occurrence of knocking. That is, to suppress the occurrence of knocking, it is necessary to start to strengthen the cooling of the intake air fed to the engine before the engine load is increased.
Therefore, a vehicle is known in the art in which a car navigation system which utilizes GPS (global positioning system) is provided. Road information including a scheduled driving route to a destination and a road slope etc. on this scheduled driving route are detected by this car navigation system. A time period during which the engine load will be increased is detected from this information, and the cooling action of the intake air fed to the engine is strengthened before the engine load is increased (for example, see Japanese Patent No. 4591435).